About the Rating System

The Silencer Master-Rater System is designed to give prospective silencer buyers a thorough comparison of silencer features to meet their unique shooting needs.  For example, The Pew Science Composite Sound Rating is the gold standard when it comes to how well a silencer mitigates sound, but provides no context for other features that might be more important.  You might want a silencer to fit inside your favorite shooting bag so length might be important.  Or maybe you have a favorite handguard and you want the diameter to match.  If you're a total cheap ass, cost is clearly going to be a major factor for you.  If cash is a plenty and all you want to do is mag dumps, you might like to know how the respective durability stacks up.  And lastly, perhaps you're a giant baby and weight is your deciding factor, who knows, but here you can figure it all out for yourself!

The Master-Rater Overall Rating is an equal combination of the other eight ratings.  We simply add up the other ratings and divide by eight.  Each rating is scaled so that 100 is the best score and zero is the worst score.  

Price is rated on a scale between $200 to $3000, where the lowest price get 100 points.  Think $3k is too much for a silencer?  Talk to TBAC, it's only a matter of time.  

Weight is rated on a scale between 2oz and 30oz, where the lowest weight gets 100pts.  If someone wants to make a can bigger than 30oz, geez it better silence your wife, too!

Length is rated on a scale between 2" and 13", where the shortest length gets 100pts.  We set 13 as the maximum figure because we thought one day, CGS might decide to make the Hyperion EVEN bigger.  

Diameter is rated on a scale between 1" and 2.25", where the smallest diameter gets 100pts.  The biggest silencer we know of is 2", but we figured someone might make a bigger one, so we left the max a little higher just in case.  

Ok, this is where things get interesting.  Durability is a combination of full-auto rating and blast baffle material.  Full-auto is either true or false, true earning 100.  Blast baffle scoring is as follows, Aluminum - 0, Titanium - 33, Steel - 66, High-Temp Alloy/Exotic Material - 100.  Then we average the two scores to get the combined durability rating.  We left out barrel length restrictions because it's just too damn confusing and there are too many variables to consider.  Besides, real silencers don't need no pussy barrel restrictions.  

Mount rating is also the averaging of two variables, direct-thread only and use of a universal mount.  Direct thread is the most limited mounting option, so it scores a zero because it can't be direct thread and also have a universal mount.  Universal mount means that it uses a standard mounting size, such as HUB 1.375x24.  For silencers that include their own proprietary mounting system, requiring a proprietary muzzle device, those models will score 50, because they have a QD but it's not HUB.  Silencers that use a HUB mount score 100.  

Service is a simple one.  Is it serviceable by either the user or the manufacturer, or are you basically SOL for maintenance issues, ie fully welded?  Serviceable gets 100pts.